Nothing Would Ever Part Them
by The Windy Woman
Summary: I was thinking about intercision, parting humans from their daemons, and came up with this. Oneshot. Complete.


Lyra, leading the children from Bolvangar through the deep snow, had only just come upon Farder Coram and the gyptians. Relief and tiredness washed over her simultaneously, but she had not time to relax or get the jostling confusion out of her head, for suddenly a sharp pain seared through her. She looked wildly around for Pantalaimon her dæmon and felt his horror as the golden arms of Mrs. Coulter's monkey dæmon wrapped around him. And then arms wrapped around her own, pinning her hands to her sides and throwing her roughly towards the buzzing sound. She looked up into the cold face of Mrs. Coulter.

She struggled and squirmed, but Mrs. Coulter hung on tight, pulling her toward another sledge. She said something in the language of the Tartars, and Lyra saw men that had come with her raise their rifles and begin shooting at the gyptians. Lyra screamed, but they couldn't help her, they couldn't shoot back, they might hit her. In the midst of the bullets came Iorek Byrnison, the shots bouncing off his think armor. He was bounding through them, sweeping them aside with his massive paws, but they were keeping him busy, and Mrs. Coulter had her on the sledge, and they were going away.

She screamed again, but the snowfall was now so thick she could not even see the light from the gyptians' lamps. They were going, farther and farther away from help, from Iorek and Roger. Pantalaimon had stopped struggling to save them the pain, for Mrs. Coulter's dæmon had him in a death grip. As they got farther away, the golden monkey finally let go of him, and he scurried over to her as an ermine and wrapped around her neck. He was shaking.

But there were lights ahead. Lyra could see anbaric lights gleaming down from the white that surrounded them. They passed through a gate, they were entering a place that looked like Bolvangar…But Bolvangar was burning. Or was it? Had they put out the fire? Or maybe this was somewhere else. Lyra couldn't tell, for the snowfall was too thick to see anything. She was being hurried in to a building, down a white corridor. It was another laboratory, or maybe the same one she had just escaped from, but she didn't have time to inspect it. Two men dressed in the usual white coats were hurrying her somewhere too fast for her to think.

And then they entered by a door, and Lyra saw that they _were_ in Bolvangar. It was the room with the mesh cages, with the silver guillotine above, ready and waiting to sever someone. She screamed and kicked, but one of the men grabbed Pantalaimon, and she could only stare in horror as for the second time in her life, someone held her dæmon. Pan looked back at her, their eyes met and didn't break contact. She wanted him nestled next her heart, one last time. They both knew what was coming.

Terror made her freeze, and the men shoved her in one of the mesh cages. Out of the corner of her eye she said Mrs. Coulter and her dæmon watching from a corner, but she didn't care; she had eyes only for Pantalaimon, who had been put in a cage across from her. The knife quivered above them, raised, ready to plunge. She scrabbled at the metal mesh and Pan, now a lion, then a beaver, then a bear, tried to break the metal, but nothing would do.

They looked up as one. For a moment they saw it, the knife, moving down, down, taking an endless time, and yet only a second. For an instant she looked into his eyes. And then it hit.

With a dull clang, the knife had cut down between the two cages. They cried out simultaneously—the last thing they would do as one. And then they were ripped apart. Lyra felt like part of her soul was missing. Shock made her shake. She was mouthing his name over and over, but she couldn't feel it, she could only stare in shock at him.

He was an ermine, the last shape he had been as her dæmon. But he wasn't her dæmon any more. He was just an ermine, an animal, a pet. And she wasn't even human. She stared at her hands. What was she? She was a sort of halfchild now, a halfgirl that would forever be shunned. She looked at Pantalaimon, and longing filled her, but it was not the sort of longing as when he had pulled her toward Iorek only a few days ago. It was the sort of longing like when you look at a favorite toy that's being taken away, or a best friend who is moving. The sort of longing that has to do with all the good memories you've shared, and knowing they are gone forever. Pan was just an ermine now.

All that happened within a space of a few seconds, and Lyra was unconscious of the tears that were running down her cheeks. One of the men picked up Pantalaimon, but the only horror Lyra felt was automatic. The man put Pan in a cage and walked out of the room without a word. She looked into Pan's eyes and knew there was some reason that she had to follow, but her emotions were no longer Pan's emotions. It was over.

It was too much. She fell sideways and hit the floor.

* * *

Lyra woke with such a start that Pan jumped from his place in her arms. The swinging of the basket reminded her where she was, and she breathed a sigh of relief, though her heart was still beating fast, and she could feel Pantalaimon's little ermine heart beating in unison with it under her hand. Iorek and Roger and Lee Scoresby had rescued them, and they were in a balloon pulled by witches, and Mrs. Coulter was far, far away, Pan reminded her quietly.

She looked at Pantalaimon. He was nestled against her heart, with the same look of longing, horror, determination, and love as she was feeling. She held him tight. Nothing would ever part them. Ever.


End file.
